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2020 Presidential election

RandyForRubio said:
The tweet you referenced has been deleted. Was this another thing like the "locked" mailboxes that was going around yesterday?

A lot of uproar over those locked boxes in Burbank, which was done for theft protection. Lol.
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There’s a lot of flailing around on this issue it seems. I’ll take some heart in that flailing motion, though—since I’d expect lots of people to act a fool if they legit thought that they were seeing the erosion of their (limited) democracy in real-time. It’s been 4 years of scandal after scandal with no consequences, so......
 
The Thriller said:
Weird. The tweet is still there when I click on it.

But I’m happy that you’ve reassured us that Trump and his donor friend isn’t doing anything to hurt the Post Office. All these reports are wrong. House Dems are meeting over nothing. Phew, that was a close one.
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I guess I should say it says "This tweet is unavailable". I'm not at all active on Twitter, so I can't imagine I'm blocked or anything? Weird.

Anyways, for the rest of your response, that's not at all what I'm saying. I don't like what Trump is saying or doing with the postal service, but I also think some of the rhetoric regarding that is overblown. It's not hard to admit there are issues with the postal service, and that does make things more uncertain for this election period.
 
NAOS said:
There’s a lot of flailing around on this issue it seems. I’ll take some heart in that flailing motion, though—since I’d expect lots of people to act a fool if they legit thought that they were seeing the erosion of their (limited) democracy in real-time. It’s been 4 years of scandal after scandal with no consequences, so......
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4 years? You're being very generous today! Try decades.
 
NAOS said:
Please don’t act like you don’t know what I’m saying. And please don’t act like Trump has been a continuation of business as usual. Tia.
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In the aspect that every president has used more and more power, yeah, he's a continuation of business.

If you want to discuss how it's exponentially higher than it previously was, then it's just a continuation of the precedents that President Obama set.

Thems the facts, bub.
 
RandyForRubio said:
In the aspect that every president has used more and more power, yeah, he's a continuation of business.

If you want to discuss how it's exponentially higher than it previously was, then it's just a continuation of the precedents that President Obama set.

Thems the facts, bub.
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I’m guessing the next point you left off your post is that the burden of proof as to whether there’s been a significant change in business as usual falls on me and my position, right?

Regardless, either way there’s been a significant shifting of the goalposts in this “discussion”. I was talking about the flailing around that seems to surround the changes as USPS: there are plenty of things worthy of sounding an alarm, and some things that are being over-reacted to. My point is that I would expect there to be some serious flailing at this point DUE TO THE MIDSET OF THE MASSES (i.e. not me specifically). So go ask them.... or sit back and cynically think there’s nothing new under the sun.
 
RandyForRubio said:
In the aspect that every president has used more and more power, yeah, he's a continuation of business.

If you want to discuss how it's exponentially higher than it previously was, then it's just a continuation of the precedents that President Obama set.

Thems the facts, bub.
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Had to cycle back and lol at the bolded.
 
Thought experiment:

imagine a small sheet of ice covering a flat stone. The temperature outside is 25 degrees Fahrenheit, but the temperature has been slowly rising for the past twenty years and will continue to do so.

Fast-forward twenty more years. The temperature outside is now 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sheet of ice is still there on the flat stone, essentially the same. All the evidence suggests that there’s been a slow and steady rise in temperature during the past twenty years—and that the ice has remained ice, and moved as ice moves.

Fast-forward 3 more years. The temperature outside is now 34-degrees outside. The temperature has continued to climb at the same steady pace.

Where’s the ice?

It has undergone a change of state. The whole assemblage of crystalline water has crossed a threshold. It now flows according to a different set of principles.


I can’t imagine a single so-called “centrist opinion” on our current politics that wouldn’t have to admit that Trump has overseen the ‘slow and steady rise in temperature in our political milieu’. I think he’s cranked up the thermostat, but let’s leave that kind of bickering to the side for the moment and just appreciate that we’ve probably crossed a threshold (but, for the record, I’ll happily tell the long story of corruption in American politics that goes back at least 40 years, as this thought experiment acknowledges). But things are different now. There’s very little value in scapegoating or any cynical opinion that refuses to acknowledge difference.
@RandyForRubio
 
But let’s also acknowledge how even if Trump’s administration hasn’t been exceedingly more corrupt than other administrations in the last 40 years, then at the very least the corruptions have been exceedingly more public in nature. That’s a difference that matters.

But, again, all take the position that it has, in fact, been more corrupt—in ways that have reached the public and likely in many ways that haven’t.
 
Here’s an outlook, from a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Not that that makes his points more valid, but I mention it because, quite frankly, this is about as dark an outlook for America’s future as it gets. I lean in his direction, and I probably have for a lot of years. But whatever idealism I do retain would prefer some hope. Ain’t much of that in this essay, but it’s a point of view, with some truth to it, methinks...

scheerpost.com

Chris Hedges: America’s Death March

Regardless of the outcome, the election will not stop the rise of hypernationalism, crisis cults and other signs of an empire’s terminal decline.
scheerpost.com scheerpost.com
 
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